Teams and drivers report from the third day of Formula 1 preseason testing at Circuit de Catalunya in Spain, on Wednesday.
Toro Rosso
Daniil Kvyat: “We lacked some running on Day 1, so we definitely bounced back today. It was important for us to do as many laps as possible and complete the programme. We managed to do so and we even managed to squeeze in some extra kilometres, which made it a very productive day. The guys in the garage should be happy with the job they’ve done, we need to continue this high level of work to get as much mileage as possible and gain confidence together. I’m comfortable with the car and every time I’m on track I have a better feeling of what the car will do, which is nice. As a team we always want to do more, so if we had the chance to do 200 laps I would take it, even if my neck probably wouldn’t enjoy it! Now it’s important to go on working hard, without getting caught up with where we finished on the timesheets – even if it’s quite pleasant to end up where we did. We need to keep focussing on the job we’re doing with the car and make sure we’re heading in the right direction. It’s early days, but a good start is always welcome.”
Jody Egginton, Deputy Technical Director: “Today was the second day in the car for Dany here in Barcelona and as expected he has picked up where he left off on Day 1 and, together with his engineers, moved forwards with the setup and understanding of the car. The day started with a block of aero related tests which have provided lots of data for the aero guys to review and give feedback on. With track and ambient temperatures increasing, the general testing work continued up to lunch time with lots of useful data gathered and further progress made with general car set up. The afternoon running initially focused on the C2 & C3 compound evaluation over longer runs which provided a useful opportunity to get a good read on tyres, although of course Barcelona at this time of year is not in many respects representative of the normal in-season running conditions and, as such, the data needs careful analysis and processing. The final runs of the day were focused towards shorter tyre related tests which once yielded useful data for further analysis. On the PU side, the test programme has continued without any issue with the focus on mileage accumulation. Overall, we are making good progress with the STR14 with minimal reliability issues and good containment, so we are on the right track with our test programme. In summary, there is still a lot to do but it’s been a satisfying day of work.”
Toyoharu Tanabe, Honda F1 Technical Director: “With both teams, today we continued working on PU function and system checks. The drivers from Day 1 were back in the cars and we proceeded with optimising the PU settings to suit each driver’s own driving style. We have acquired a lot of useful data over the past three days and we will apply it for tomorrow’s session in order to have another trouble-free day.”
Ferrari
Team report: “Sebastian Vettel was back behind the wheel of the Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow SF90 for the third and penultimate day of the first Formula 1 pre-season test. The German completed 80 laps in the morning and a further 54 in the afternoon, thus completing the planned distance on the programme ahead of schedule. So far, the SF90 has done 460 laps here at the Barcelona-Catalunya Circuit. Set-up work. Once again, the morning session began with a first run to check all the car components were functioning properly. Then the team got down to set-up work and evaluating tyres, simulating various phases of a race. Vettel set his fastest time a bit before the lunch break, stopping the clocks in 1’18”350.”
Sebastian Vettel: “It was good to be back in the car today and put some more mileage under my belt. Again, we had a busy day and managed to complete our programme, which included a few new items, compared to Monday. We tried a few things around also focusing on set-up and I can only confirm the positive impression I had on day one. Having now put 303 laps in the bag I feel comfortable to say we are satisfied with how the car is progressing.”
Mercedes
Valtteri Bottas: “Similar to the last two days, we did some more aero measurements in the morning. After that we completed a full race distance for the first time in the new car, 66 laps in a row without any issues. We’re learning more and more about the W10 and it again felt better than the day before. There’s still room for improvement, but we’re making progress every day.”
Lewis Hamilton: “We got a lot of mileage in again today, both Valtteri and myself completed a whole race distance, so it’s been a good day for reliability. We have been digging deep, trying to understand the car, pretty much the same as the beginning of every year. I love that challenge of coming back each year; getting into a new car is like meeting someone new – you don’t know the good and bad and the journey you go on with that car is a real privileged position. It’s crazy to think this is my seventh season with the team, and this looks like it is going to be the most challenging year of our partnership so I’m super excited. I love racing so nothing really changes there.”
James Allison: “Both drivers completed trouble-free race distances today and it was another very productive day for us in terms of knowing how hard we can lean on the tyres in these conditions. It’s all part of building the foundation for the week that will follow and it’s good to have those race distances tucked away so early in the test, leaving us able to focus a little bit more on performance tomorrow, but most of that work will come in the following week.”
Red Bull
Max Verstappen: “I think today was really positive. Whenever you do more than 100 laps at a test, that’s a good day. I’m happy with the way we’re working together with Honda so far, it’s very focused and everybody knows their job. What’s most important is that we have completed a lot of laps and investigated many set-up changes. With different regulations, you have to understand what direction to go in and that’s exactly what we’re doing. So far, it’s difficult to judge where we are compared to the other teams – we’ll find that out in Melbourne – but at the moment the car feels good.”
Guillaume Rocquelin, Head of Race Engineering, “For the first two days of the test, we were concentrating on accumulating mileage but today we switched focus and began to work on car set-up. Today, we switched to a different rear-wing that is more suited to this circuit. That put us in the right ballpark for this track, and allowed us to get a better understanding of what the car can do. We made a lot of set-up changes throughout the afternoon, performance improved and we’re quite happy with how we ended the day.”
McLaren
Carlos Sainz: “Today was a bit more of a challenging day as we made a few changes on the car overnight, which delayed our start while we finished preparing everything. However, we still managed to complete almost a race distance, and we’ve already seen the benefits from that in the information we’ve gathered. We picked up valuable data from the longer runs especially, and now we hope we can continue with some smooth running for Lando tomorrow on the final day.”
Gil de Ferran, Sporting Director: “We had a lot of work to do overnight, hence the slightly later start this morning. Nevertheless, it was another productive day in which we were able to complete 90 laps, including a number of long runs. The learning continues, the work continues, and the whole team is putting in a lot of hours to ensure we maximise our track time.”
Racing Point
Sergio Perez: “We made good progress today and I feel we took another step forward. The day was a bit shorter than we expected because we had a small issue with the car late in the afternoon. I lost drive but was able to recover to the pits. So we couldn’t complete all of our programme, but I feel we’re still improving as we get to know the car. I’ve done two days in the car now and I’m generally feeling happy. The balance was good from day one and that’s important. I’m not testing again until next week, but if we keep working like this I will be happy with my preparations for Melbourne.”
Tom McCullough, Performance Engineering Director: “It was another positive day of running and we managed to accrue some good mileage, despite a drive line issue that curtailed part of our running in the afternoon. We are still investigating what caused the issue, but we thankfully didn’t lose too much time. We continued our aero data collection this morning and then began the set-up work in the afternoon. It will be more of the same with Lance tomorrow as we wrap up the first week of testing.”
Williams
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: “It’s very disappointing to miss two days of this first test in Barcelona, but we are very happy today that we got the car out for the afternoon session. We were late but not for the lack of incredible effort from the whole team both in the factory and here in the garage. We spent the afternoon doing a number of systems checks and various data gathering programmes without any significant reliability issues, so we are happy with that as a first look at the FW42. This puts us in good shape to get down to some more significant programmes starting tomorrow morning. We have missed a lot of time, but we are looking forward at this stage and we will make the very best use of the five days remaining of winter testing. Thank you to all the staff for their teamwork and dedication in getting this car out today.”
George Russell: “It was amazing to finally drive the FW42. Today we focused purely on install laps, shaking the car down and data gathering. Our focus was not on performance runs so I can’t judge the overall potential of the car, but I’m excited that we will get a full day of running tomorrow.